Resilience for women on the land: how rural discourses enable or constrain their well-being, empowerment and resilience

Resilience for women on the land: how rural discourses enable or constrain their well-being, empowerment and resilience

The agricultural sector in Australia has been impacted over the past thirty years by many challenging forces, including rural structural adjustment policies, commodity price fluctuations, and the accelerating shocks of climate change. Most agriculture is carried out by family farm businesses, and these families have borne the brunt of these changes. Rural people have been praised for their resilience in the face of adversity. How could resilience be fostered and supported in these families?
This presentation explores the family dynamics that enable or constrain well-being, empowerment and resilience of women in farm families in South West Queensland with a focus on the role of the daughter-in-law. The researcher used a feminist post-structural lens to conduct and analyse over 40 in-depth semi-structured interviews with 20 farmwomen. More than half of these conversations took place at the kitchen tables of the respondents, the others over a cup of coffee at a local café. This presentation suggests that resilience for these women begins at home, with their acculturation into and acceptance by the receiving farm family, and that the well-being and empowerment of farm women is key to the resilience and adaptability of the farm sector.